"Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment, and damages society."
Benedict XVI.
Caritas in Veritate, June 2009.

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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Pope Francis: "Culture of waste" requires a Catholic response

I would like us all to make a serious commitment to respect
and protect creation, to be attentive to every person, to counter the culture
of waste and disposable, to promote a culture of solidarity and of encounter.
Thank you.

Pope Francis. General
Audience June 5th, 2013.

The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that in 1960 the United States produced
some 88 million tons of municipal waste. In 2010 that number climbed to
just under 250 million tons—and it may have been higher had a recession not
slowed consumption. This jump reflects an almost 184 percent increase in what
Americans throw out even though our population increased by only 60 percent.

This
disparate increase has much to do with what we buy, the
quantities thereof, its expected use-life, how it is packaged, and how the
packaging itself is packaged, wrapped, surrounded with polystyrene, cardboard, and shrink-wrap. Even simple items like lettuce and chewing gum now come in plastic containers that we use ever so briefly and then throw away. While
recycling has trimmed the tonnage being trucked to landfills, America is
still a nation that consumes and wastes much more than it ever has. The
question is: Why?

Pope Francis provided some answers in his first major
statement on ecology—natural and human. His sweeping eco-comments at Wednesday’s General Audience offer us much to consider. But one theme in particular dominated
his words—a theme that follows quite naturally from his predecessor, who he
quoted throughout his audience.

Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules.
God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to
us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed
to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the “culture of waste.”

Western cultures—and those tempted to follow the ways of the West—have come to
expect that one can and deserves to attain and consume whatever (and whomever)
one wants. Advertisements not only insist that you can have it your way and
have as much as you want, but that you deserve to have whatever it is that’s
being sold—even if you have lived all these years quite well without it. The
makers of such ads understand the fractures in the human soul. They intuitively
know that the effects of original sin can be used as a foothold for profit.
They create characters and settings that excite our passions. They use language
that tugs at our insecurities and at the faint awareness of our
incompleteness—a lack of love that all humans crave to fill. In all, the
vocation of advertising has become a means to convince us that fulfillment
comes only from the attainment of earthly goods.

This was also the belief of our iconic parents. As Adam and Eve learned about the consequences of their grasping, we are learning that every man-made
environmental issue demonstrates that having it our way
comes with quite serious and often permanent problems. As discussions of
toxic chemicals and species extinction show us, there is a connection
between our consumption and the quality and quantity of life on earth—most especially human life, born and
unborn. This consumption also has spiritual ramifications, and thus requires a
pastoral response as well as an intellectual one. This is why understanding
what ecology is showing us and the work of environmental protection,
authentically understood and practiced, is a Catholic duty.

Quite simply, environmental protection will benefit from a
Catholic awareness of virtue, which defines authentic, ecologically sound human
existence: prudence to make right choices; justice to ensure that the rights of
strangers are not compromised in our search for pleasure or raw materials; fortitude to
guide our urges toward a common good, and especially the virtue of temperance,
which we need desperately to consume less.

When graced with the theological
virtues of faith, hope, and charity, these virtues will reorient our inner
attitudes to seek fulfillment not in what we consume, but in how well we "love
in the present," as a young Joseph Ratzinger put it.

Reorienting the way we fulfill—or turn from—our many
appetites has far-reaching ends that go far beyond issues of natural ecology.
They affect human ecology, too. This is the very point that Paul VI, John Paul
II, Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis have been expressing, and it is a
fundamental message within revelation. Benedict XVI stated it succinctly in
noting that each society must engage in a “serious review of its lifestyle,
which, in many parts of the world, is prone to hedonism and consumerism,
regardless of their harmful consequences. What is needed is an effective shift
in mentality which can lead to the adoption of new lifestyles.” (Caritas in Veritate, 51)

And now his successor continues the lesson:

This "culture of waste" tends to become the common
mentality that infects everyone. Human life, the person is no longer perceived
as a primary value to be respected and protected, especially if poor or
disabled, if not yet useful - such as the unborn child - or no longer needed -
such as the elderly. This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the
waste and disposal of food, which is even more despicable when all over the
world, unfortunately, many individuals and families are suffering from hunger
and malnutrition. Once our grandparents were very careful not to throw away any
leftover food. Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily
waste of food, to which, at times, we are no longer able to give a just value,
which goes well beyond mere economic parameters. We should all remember,
however, that throwing food away is like stealing from the tables of the the
poor, the hungry! I encourage everyone to reflect on the problem of thrown away
and wasted food to identify ways and means that, by seriously addressing this
issue, are a vehicle of solidarity and sharing with the needy.

To think of the other as we consume "our" food (or any resource, or anyone), we must focus on what drives us to consume and
waste all that we do. And we must introduce ourselves to what—indeed, Whom—we
truly seek. As Saint Augustine
has noted, our hearts are restless until they rest with the Triune God—the God who
is relation and love. This is precisely the meaning of Pope Francis's hope of a "culture of solidarity and of encounter."

The task of the Catholic ecologist, then, must primarily be
to proclaim the good news of Christ’s offer of life—which comes through the sacrifice of the Cross. For in the end, it will
not be science or educational programs that will still our gluttonous
consumption. It will be the Gospel of Life and the Grace of God that will
reorient and elevate our nature—and in so doing protect nature itself.

About the author

is an environmental regulator with a Master of Arts in theology. His thesis examined the influences of St. Bonaventure on Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. In 2010 he was inducted into the Theta Alpha Kappa honor society for theological studies. Most recently he presented at the 2012 International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Bill is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island in mechanical engineering. He is a 25-year employee with Rhode Island's Department of Environmental Management, for which he has received numerous state and federal awards.
Since 2004, Bill has been writing “Catholic Ecology” for the Rhode Island Catholic. He also writes about Catholicism and social commentary for local and national publications, including Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insights.
Bill has most recently completed his new book Catholic Ecology: Its place in Orthodoxy, a Culture of Life, and the New Evangelization. Mr. Patenaude is also a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

What is contained herein is but one person's attempt to teach and defend the Church's teachings—ecological and otherwise. As such, I offer all contents of this blog for approval of the bishops of the Church. It is my hope that nothing herein will lead anyone astray from truth.